Why You Should Care About Rift: Planes of Telara

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The quietly simmering MMO is showing far more promise than we expected.

By Nick Kolan

Whether it's because of vast improvements since we last saw it, or simply that the PCs here at IGN are pretty darn powerful, Rift: Planes of Telara is now an undeniably gorgeous game, and an MMO that any fan of World of Warcraft or EverQuest should pay a great deal of attention to, because it is also a lot of fun. Rift is built for experienced MMO players. Its setting, Telara, is a world enveloped by a war between the Defiants and the Guardians and several non-player factions, all vying for territory and dominance.

The war between the Defiants and Guardians had weakened both sides, so when an "ancient evil" swept in, the mortal races were unprepared and incapable of defending themselves. That's when Regulos, a giant purple demon-guy decided to go ahead and let his Plane of Death totally engulf Telara. As a Defiant, I began on a cold, hard metal platform and had just been brought back to life, assumedly having died at the hands of the forces of Regulos the Destroyer.

Stop!... In the name of love.

I had just chosen my Calling (which is kind of like a class archetype) -- the Cleric -- and was about to choose my first soul (which is kind of like a specific class). A quest giver told me to check information points scattered throughout the room to learn about the three starter souls available to me. As a Cleric, I would have the most flexibility in terms of my soul choices. As a Cleric, I was a mail-wearer, giving me the second toughest armor, and would ultimately have access to souls that made me not only a very good healer, but a competent tank, as well as ranged and melee damage options.

My first choices were between the Inquisitor, a ranged damage-dealer with both damage-over-time abilities and high-damage "nukes", the Shaman, who had a more melee focus, and the Sentinel, who was all about healing. I went with the Inquisitor, and stepped out of the stone chamber to observe the charred wasteland-in-the-making that was Terminus. A volcano in the distance spewed lava, and lighting to the left forked down from the sky, but no rain fell. I was told I had to make my way to the "Failsafe Device" if Telara were to have any chance at survival at all. What was the Failsafe Device, though?

As a character explained to me a short time later, the Failsafe device is a rudimentary time machine. Incapable of transporting the users wherever they wish in the past or future, the Failsafe Device could only transport a single user to the location and point in time that it had been created. You, the most advanced "Ascended" ever created, would be the one to go back and warn your pals from the past of their imminent doom, and your opening series of quests all direct you along this path.

Mount Doom? Wait, am I in the right game?

In terms of gameplay, Rift's structure is by no means unique or inventive. It plays, for lack of a better comparison, almost identically to the games that came before it -- EverQuest, World of Warcraft and the like -- and makes no effort to hide that fact. This certainly works against Rift when you're simply glancing at the game from between the shoulders of other people on the floor of a game show, or when you're browsing screenshots in a gallery somewhere. But don't let Rift's familiar structure fool you; where Rift differentiates itself from its predecessors is in its flexibility and polish.

My character is currently a Justicar/Inquisitor hybrid. The Inquisitor specializes in ranged damage, and the deeper into the tree you put your points, the more potent those ranged abilities become, adding abilities that slow foes, or cause them to flee in terror. The Justicar is almost the exact opposite; every ability is melee-oriented, with a focus on hammers and shields. Melee strikes restore health to you and your allies, and give you resources to cast more healing abilities. As it stands now, I've focused mostly on the Justicar soul, but two of my most-used abilities are spells I unlocked from the Inquisitor tree. The end result is a melee-heavy fighter who is capable of healing himself, while dumping a couple of damage-over-time spells on opponents to wear them down.

While it does well enough (although a little slowly) for solo-fighting, my character build would shine brightest in a group, where every one of my blows, and every tick of damage, would heal my allies as well. Looking at it now, for leveling, I would have been better off choosing the Shaman soul to combine with the Justicar, as the Shaman would add further damage for each melee strike. Luckily, that's an option that will become available down the line as I unlock it and other souls. If PvP were my focus, the Inquisitor might have been a better choice due to its stuns and slowing abilities. Merging it with a healer or tank soul could provide some extra survivability for myself and teammates as well.

One of the many rift's in Rift. Hence the name.

The system is built to appeal to the hardcore MMO player -- the kind who sits in front of talent calculators, figuring out just which talents will provide the absolute highest damage-per-second, or the most flexible healing options, or the greatest amount of survivability and hate-generation. There is still some distinction between the Callings, though. Yes, the Cleric is the most flexible of the callings, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a way to make it a good twitch-fighter, and its ranged damage options are simply not as strong as some of the others. The Warrior calling doesn't even have a ranged damage option, while the Mage calling lacks any sort of tanking options, and has very limited melee options in general. The Rogue calling lacks heals, with the exception of the Bard soul, whose healing capabilities are narrow, but whose buffs are unparalleled.

As my time in Terminus drew to a close, a Death rift spat forth a gigantic and extremely impressive looking dragon. I was sucked back in time to a much greener Telara, at a point in time when the war between factions was still strong, but before Regulos became the dominant threat. Little Defiant settlements dotted the landscape, but there was simply no way to get between them other than on-foot. The quests were structured to slowly push me from the top of the zone to the bottom, but at some point I ignored them and simply set off to explore. Upon my death at the hands of a gigantic flaming boar, I found that the only way back to safe territory was on foot. I asked one of the players online at the time -- almost certainly one of the developers -- whether there was any means of fast-travel, and they told me "Yes, but it has its limitations, and you have to earn it."

That is what Rift is all about, though. It's tough, but is built deep, and happens to be very pretty. As development of Rift continues, it will ideally only become better. Is it going to be the coveted "WoW Killer?" I hate that term, and am automatically inclined to say no because of that. I would say that is destined to at the very least be a good "WoW Alternative," kind of like the Zune to the iPod, except hopefully less of a complete and utter failure.